Mexico Arrests Ex-Chief of Police in City Where 43 Students Disappeared

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s federal police on Friday arrested a fugitive former municipal police chief who is a major figure in the investigation into the disappearance of 43college students in September 2014.

The former chief, Felipe Flores Velázquez, was in charge of the local police force on the night that the students vanished in the city of Iguala, which is in the southern state of Guerrero.

The Mexican government says that police officers handed the students over to members of a local drug gang, who killed them and then burned the bodies. International human rights experts have cast doubt on the investigation.

The Mexican authorities have detained 128 suspects in the case, but Mr. Flores, who was at large for two years, had eluded them until now.